Nov 14, 2017

Sharks don't typically seek the services of a dentist – if they lose a tooth, another one takes its place in as little as one day.

But consider the images shared last week via Instagram by filmmaker Joe Romeiro, co-founder of 333 Productions. They show Romeiro, shark advocate and conservationist, carefully extracting two broken teeth from the infected gum of a 13-foot great hammerhead shark.

“I wouldn’t advise anyone to try this,” Romeiro advises in his Instagram post. Of the shark he half-joked, “With some trust I guess even a shark can use a dentist from time to time.”

The filmmaker, who was with 333 Productions partner Bill Fisher, said the extraordinary encounter occurred in 2015, but that the images were not published until last week.

The shark had been swimming in shallow water at a spot where intimately close and encounters between sharks and divers are fairly common.

Romero and Fisher spent about three hours with the shark, during repeated dives, and had noticed the raw gum area. At one point, Romeiro began to caress the shark’s snout and the predator remained still enough – like a trusting patient – to allow the filmmaker to remove its broken teeth.

“She eventually just let me do it, and she was really active afterwards,” Romeiro said. “I can only describe it as it seemed that she was relieved that it wasn’t impacted anymore.”

Of course, this isn’t something a casual diver visiting the Bahamas would even dare attempt. Romeiro and Fisher have been diving with sharks since they were very young, and their footage has been featured widely on TV and in print.

Reads part of their company bio: “Joe and Bill portray sharks the way they see them, as beautiful and awe-inspiring creatures that are an important and critical element of our oceans’ ecosystems.”

Great hammerhead sharks, which can reach lengths of about 20 feet, inhabit tropical and subtropical seas and prey largely on fish, rays, and smaller sharks. They’re not considered an especially dangerous shark, but have been implicated in sporadic attacks on humans. The species is listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).